Wednesday, April 17, 2013

“30 Sites and 30 Nights”—April 17, 2013 (Day 29)

Name: Caitlin
Haden

Age: 24

Home Town: Denver, Colorado

What
she did before Peace Corps: Graduated with a Bachelor’s of Social
Work and a Minor in Elementary Education, and was working as a Case
Manager for a housing program through an agency that provided
services to homeless teens and young adults in the Denver metro area.
She also volunteered with children with cancer.

Caitlin is working with
Kabale-Bukinda Core PTC where she has been assigned to be a literacy
specialist. She will also be teaching English Language classes and
promoting literacy techniques amongst the students. Even though
Caitlin is new to site, she has already managed to start a secondary
project. She is planning on starting “Pub Trivia” at her college
to help the students review for their national exams. Her hope is
that this program will became a nation-wide program. She is also
planning on working on a project to make sure that all of her PTC
students have a way to hang their mosquito nets when they are living
at the primary schools during their school practice.

Even though Caitlin’s
school serves meals throughout the day that she could partake in, she
prefers to cook for herself. She gets most of her food at the
supermarket in Kabale Town, but there is also a local market in her
trading center where she can get fruits and vegetables. Caitlin also
has running water and electricity in her house.

Caitlin’s favorite
things about her site are its location and the amenities she has
there. “We’re in a valley and the hills that surround us are
easily accessible. They make for a great hike and adventure around my
site.” So far, Caitlin's favorite moment at her site is when she
went out to school practice a few weeks ago to an all boys school.
“They [the students] surrounded me and we went up to a hill where
we just sat and sang songs and played together.” Her biggest
challenge at site is the lack of structure between her college and
the local university, Kyambogo University. She also struggles with
the way the teachers at the PTC don't use the timetables for the
classes. So teachers often don't follow the set schedule for class
and they just teach when they want to.

_____________________________________________________________________

Name: Julia
Lingham

Home Town: Boston, Massachusetts

What she did
before Peace Corps: Worked for Boston University for their study
abroad program in Australia

Julia is working with
Nyabirerema Demonstration School. One of the projects she is working
on is building a resource room. Her school has a lot of donated
books from American organizations, so she is working on setting up a
library. Currently she is assessing the reading skills of the
students. And in term two, she is going to do small group work with
20 students at a time trying to improve literacy. She is trying to
encourage the other teachers to use the resources they have. She also
does read-alouds with the kids. In addition to all this she is
working on positive reenforcement, where she will also be working
with other volunteers on how to improve positive reenforcement among
teachers and students.

Julia's favorite thing
about her site is the location. “I love Kabale. I love the
altitude and the mountains.” She also really loves living with
another volunteer. She feels that it keeps her more sane at site and
she is less likely to really want to get out of her site for
weekends. Her favorite moment at site was when she cut all her hair
off. She had another volunteer do this for her shortly after she
got to site.

Julia's biggest
challenge at her site is “Big Man syndrome.” This is when men
here in Uganda think that they can do no wrong and when they belittle
people to make themselves seem more powerful. This has caused
problems for Julia because she struggles to work with certain people
at her site because she often can't get a word in edgewise. She has
also struggled to form relationships at her site. She is trying find
a new counterpart, because her assigned counterpart is not very
enthusiastic about working with her. She found two potential
counterparts, but both of these people got transferred to other
schools.

This morning I left
Kisiizi at around 7 AM. Alia knew a taxi driver that goes from
Kisiizi to Kabale and he leaves promptly at 7 so she called him
yesterday to reserve a seat for me. It only took me about an hour
and a half to get to Bukinda, which is about 30 kilometers north of
Kabale. During the journey it started to rain but luckily the rain
mostly stopped by the time I got to Julia and Caitlin's site.

When I first arrived in
Bukinda, I walked up to the PTC where Julia met me and took me back
to her house. Julia and Caitlin have a very unique situation. They
both live in the same house on the PTC campus. They are the only
Peace Corps volunteers in Uganda that actually share the same house
(except married couples). There are some volunteers that live close
to each other or even right next door to each other, but no other
pair of volunteers live in the same house, except for married
couples.

Some of the very colorful buildings on the PTC campus

After getting to their
house they offered me a cup of tea and we sat and chatted for a
while. Then Caitlin took me through some of the PTC campus to show
me around and she also introduced me to her supervisor and some of
the other staff members. Once I had seen the campus, Julia and I
decided to head to Kabale Town.

Kabale is about a 30
minute drive from their site and it is easy to get a taxi at the main
road. Once we got here I went to Edirisa, which is the hostel that
I'm staying at tonight and tomorrow night. I wanted to check in and
get settled while Julia ran some errands in town and eventually she
came to meet me for lunch. After lunch, a few other volunteers ended
up meeting up with us and we spent most of the rest of the day just
hanging out.

I decided to spend
tonight and tomorrow night at this hostel, because it is my last two
nights on the project. Despite the fact, that everyone I've stayed
with so far has been so nice and hospitable, I felt like I just
needed my own space. I needed a break and I wanted to have my own
place for a couple nights.

Tomorrow I'll be
traveling out to Lake Bunyonyi to see my last and final site. After
tomorrow this project is officially finished and I'll be going to
Jinja for the weekend. For now, 29 down, 1 to go!